Cortana as a Skill in other Assistants

Good, as opposed to having assistants competing,  have them work together by addressing particular contexts.   Not Sure how this will work with Cortana exactly, would make sense for it to provide assistance for its office suite, will be following

In new consumer push, Microsoft looks to put Cortana into rival voice assistants  By Maria Deutscher in SiliconAngle

Microsoft Corp. is looking to make its Cortana voice assistant available as a native “skill” for Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa and Google Assistant as part of a new push to court consumers.

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella  shared the plan during a press event earlier this week. His remarks, which were made public today, indicate that Microsoft has more or less given up trying up to compete directly with Alexa and Google Assistant.

It’s not hard to see the reasoning behind the decision. The two services boast a massive a market share advantage over Cortana. According to data from analyst firm Canalys, Amazon’s Alexa powered nearly 75 percent of the roughly 20 million smart speakers that were sold during in third quarter of 2018, while Google Assistant accounted for practically all the rest.

Nadella said that Cortana could extend the services’ capabilities to make them more useful for users.

“Would it be better off, for example, to make Cortana a valuable skill that someone who is using Alexa can call? Or should we try to compete with Alexa? We, quite frankly, decided that we would do the former. Because Cortana needs to be that skill for anyone who is a Microsoft Office 365 subscriber,” Nadella was quoted as saying.  .... "